From Cliché to Archetype

McLuhan, M. and Wilfred Watson (1970). From Cliché to Archetype. New York: Viking.

On this module, we do not look at McLuhan's collaboration with Wilfred
Watson, From Cliché and Archetype, but this short introduction is
provided for those who are interested. This elegantly designed book is presented
as a patchwork of short reflections, arranged in alphabetical order (even
the Introduction and Table of Contents are combined with the other entries).
The key terms "cliché" and "archetype" are two of McLuhan’s
most difficult ideas, but the main theme of the discussion is our formulaic,
habitual ways of engaging with the world, and how these have changed, particularly
in the modern period.

The term "cliché" is a French word which derived originally from
printing, and refers to the blocks that are used to make prints. Similarly,
the word "archetype", which comes from Greek, first referred to
an original pattern or model from which copies are made. A cliché
has come to mean an overused expression which, though it was once fresh
and conveyed something novel, has been repeated so many times that it is
now a trite stereotype, such as "you are what you eat" or "you
can’t teach an old dog new tricks". An archetype, in psychology
and literary criticism, has come to mean a mythical, universal figure or
idea that repeats itself throughout history and across cultures, such as
the questing hero or the ill-fated lovers.

In From Cliché to Archetype, McLuhan extends these two terms beyond
their usual verbal or literary meanings. For instance, he argues that our
very perceptions are clichés, since they are patterned by the many hidden,
surrounding structures of culture. We tend to see or hear what we expect
to see or hear. So, at its simplest level, a cliché is a perceptual probe,
which promises new information but merely reiterates old, stereotyped ways
of understanding.

In addition, McLuhan links clichés to technologies. According to McLuhan,
technologies extend our senses and abilities, allowing us to see further
or move faster, for instance. But, as we quickly come to rely on these technologies,
they create pervasive, persistent environments that actually numb our attention.
Thus, we can also use "cliché" to describe technological extensions,
which enlarge our sensory life but actually reduce our powers of attention
and insight.

Finally, clichés can sometimes awake us from this dazed state, and provide
a breakthrough into a new kind of experience. The continually repeated cliché
can draw attention to itself, prompting a sting of perception or shock of
recognition. In this sense, a "cliché" can be a breakthrough
that actually enhances our understanding. Thus, McLuhan uses the term "cliché"
to describe our perceptual probes into the surrounding culture, which are
mostly numbed by the technologies that pervade this environment, but which
occasionally provide us with insights into this very ubiquity.

Similarly, McLuhan broadens the meaning of the term "archetype."
McLuhan argues that every technology initially extends some human faculty,
creating a new cultural environment and mode or awareness (cliché). This
technology and mode of awareness are then pushed aside or scrapped by a
new technology, only to be retrieved later on by yet another technology.
It is this process of retrieval that turns a cliché into an archetype.
Thus, for McLuhan, archetypes are not universal or primordial figures or
ideas which mystically appear from time to time, but are accumulated collections
of particular, historically specific clichés. The title of the book, From
Cliché to Archetype, refers to the process whereby a cliché becomes,
through retrieval, an archetype.

So, why are the sections of the book arranged in alphabetical order, and
why does the Table of Contents appear under T rather than at the beginning
of the book? In fact, the form of the book illustrates the content, i.e.
the key ideas of cliché and archetype. We can think of the alphabet
as a cliché, a technology that has become so pervasive that we fail to notice
the way that it shapes our thinking. A Table of Contents, meanwhile,
is a kind of archetype, which retrieves other parts of a book. In From
Cliché to Archetype, McLuhan and Watson upset our expectations by mischievously
missing out some letters from their alphabetical list and repeating others,
and also by placing the Table of Contents under T and the Introduction under
I (even the Notes on Sources were supposed to appear under N, but the publisher
put them at the end). In this way, the authors draw our attention to the
regimented, disciplining effect of alphabetization by means of the cliché
itself (cliché as breakthrough). Indeed, since the material is ordered alphabetically,
the Table of Contents is in fact largely useless, except, as Terrence Gordon
has pointed out, as a reminder that archetypes can themselves become clichés...

(2) Environment (as Cliché) (pp. 76-79). Further consolidation of
clichés: considers the city as a multiplicity of accumulated service environments,
i.e. numbing clichés.

(3) Archetype (pp. 17-23). Introduces McLuhan’s understanding of
the archetype, which considers it not as a primordial, universal symbol,
but as a retrieved cliché, i.e. a technologically engendered mode of awareness
from an earlier period.

(5) Retrieval (pp. 185-90). Further consolidation of the cliché-to-archetype
process: nostalgic “archetypalizing” is the tendency to see recent developments
as instances of a universal archetype, rather than as the retrieval of
earlier environments, i.e. clichés.

Gordon, W. Terrence (2010). McLuhan: A Guide for the Perplexed.
New York: Continuum, pp. 120-25. Brief account of McLuhan’s understanding
of clichés and archetypes, with several examples.

McLuhan, M. (1964). New Media and the Arts. Arts in Society
3.2 (September). University of Wisconsin Press, pp. 239-42. An early exploration
by McLuhan of the cliché-to-archetype process.

Watson, W. (1974). Marshall McLuhan and Multi-Consciousness: The Place
Marie Dialogues. Boundary 2, 3.1, A Canadian Issue (Autumn), pp. 197-212.
Watson’s account of his dialogues with McLuhan, which formed the basis of
From Cliché to Archetype.